Sweet Spring!

"The world's favorite season is the spring. All things seem possible in May."
- Edwin Way Teale

Tish is a friend from my childhood.  I enjoy spending time with her each travel to California that I make from my home in Alaska.  We didn't give much thought to flowers in our early years; we were close like any high-school friends, fairly "normal" during that phase of our lives. Amazing, now, how important our gardens are to the both of us.

I took a stroll through her gardens at Dias Dorados and was drawn to the roses of May, just as the poet Sheridan’s beckoning, “Won't you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.” 

Reveling in the wonders of the poppies, irises, sweet peas and azaelas that grow on her hillside, I shut my eyes at the heady perfume coming from the the vast family of roses which grew upright and in shrubs, climbing and trailing...even my friend doesn't know how many grow or how old the roses are.    

Sweet spring!

Full of sweet days and roses, a box where sweets compacted lie! - George Herbert



May and June.  Soft syllables, gentle names for the two best months in the garden year:  cool, misty mornings gently burned away with a warming spring sun, followed by breezy afternoons and chilly nights.  The discussion of philosophy is over; it's time for work to begin. ~ Peter Loewer

Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity. ~John Ruskin

In my own gardens, I yearn to create a place of beauty and meaning.  I am possessed, it comes naturally, and from rising to end of day, thoughts are of flowers, and shrubs, and trees.   Oh, yes, and soil, rakes, shovels, spades and gardening gloves.  Each day I don the clothing for the day:  old jeans, t-shirt, jacket which is quickly shed, and my red rubber gardening clogs.  My Alaska wild roses are beginning to sprout leaves, I must hurry and wander outside to watch.